Sickle cell anemia is a recessive gene disorder, it takes two to have the disease. As a carrier, you have one, the other is normal. If you marry another person with the trait there is a 25% chance for a child with SS anemia, 50% as carrier, and 25% with normal hemoglobin genes. Normally, only those with SS anemia will require blood transfusions, carriers and of course those with normal hemoglobin genes would not. There has been some papers suggesting that some carriers may have some "sickling" in extreme stress (low oxygen) situations but that is all I have seen. It has also been suggested that the "sickled" red cells are resistant to malaria infections, (natural gene selection over the years), so these individuals don't die of malaria, but unfortunely the sickle cell anemia usually does them in.
Hope this helps
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